I am probably going to live to regret this one, but some guy has asked me a couple of times to do a column on the Mogollon Monster, and I'm thinking I may as well do it and get it out of the way.

And before we go any farther, I would like to make it clear that I don't believe there is any such thing as the Mogollon Monster. If you believe you have seen, smelled, touched or played gin rummy with the Mogollon Monster, that's your business. Just don't write or call me about it.

The Mogollon Monster is Arizona's version of Bigfoot. It lives, as you may have guessed, along the Mogollon Rim, although he also has been spotted around Prescott.

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Like any self-respecting monster he is big and hairy and ugly. He is said to be about 7 feet tall, muscular and covered with long hair. And he smells awful.

On the upside, the Mogollon Monster is said to be very shy, and as far as anyone knows he doesn't seem to have ever hurt anyone. He mostly stomps around campsites, making a lot of noise and tearing stuff up and eating all the food.

All the things I read referred to the monster as a male. Whether there is a Mrs. Mogollon Monster or little monsters, I don't know.

I found a piece by a man named Don Davis, who said he saw the monster during a Boy Scout camping trip near Payson in 1944 or 1945. Davis was a cryptozoology investigator who died in 2002. Here is part of his account:

"The creature was huge. Its eyes were deep set and hard to see, but they seemed expressionless. His face seemed pretty much devoid of hair, but there seemed to be hair along the sides of his face. His chest, shoulders, and arms were massive, especially the upper arms; easily upwards of 6 inches in diameter, perhaps much, much more. I could see he was pretty hairy, but didn't observe really how thick the body hair was. The face/head was very square; square sides and squared up chin, like a box."

And it smelled really bad. Davis thought at first he had pooped in his sleeping bag out of fright, but apparently that's just the way the Mogollon Monster smells.

Apparently MM then proceeded to stomp around the camp and make a big mess and eat up all the food.

As I said, if you want to believe this thing exists, fine. Personally, if I wanted to see scary monsters that eat up all the food, I'd go to lunch with my masters.